I grew up with hearing loss and I've started this community to share knowledge and experiences. I am initially targeting tech-savvy users with the hope of attracting people with software and hardware skills who can help me build products and services for hearing impaired. Second step is to include a larger group of people including first timers and older ones.
ha! I've had a very similar idea when I was being bugged by so many co-founders who were looking for equity based tech co-founders.
I thought: so many startups have no skills to build their mvp so let's build it for them!
I've then created a lean landing page to get feedback about the idea of building mvps for startups: mvpeers.com. A full-stack dev friend of mine was also involved in the experiment.
I followed a totally lean approach: I started off with just a title and began posting my landing page in startup forums asking people what kind of information I should have put on the page. After a day I had a full page, signups and referrals. I've made a time lapse of the page itself for fun :) http://j0hnlucas.tumblr.com/post/22121212880/git-time-lapse
re premise 2: I believe a lone coder is not all it takes to create a successful mvp, you need to have experience with lean concepts. Building "just enough" and finding real insight from feedback are not easy tasks.
I spent a month or so gathering online and offline feedback and tried to close deals with customers but then gave up.
My takeaway:
1. first timer startuppers are so naive sometimes that they believe they are making you - an experienced coder - a favour by sharing their idea with you. So 50-50 is not even obvious to them (even without any cash!)
2. first time startuppers don't have much money.
3. more experienced startuppers who understand real value in mvps tend to partner up with someone who can code.
All this said, I still believe there must be a niche for selling these services if awareness is raised properly. It's important to find the right customers who are educated enough to understand the value of a good mvp and have up to $10k to put on an idea.
I've done an AmA on Reddit last week that explains a bit where I am coming from: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3gpuj3/iama_tech_star...